Director/ DP

Sam & Mattie Make A Zombie Film

Director

Sam and Mattie are BFFs from Providence, Rhode Island. The two met in grade school through the Special Olympics, and for the most part, they're normal teenage dudes. They like to skate and play video games and talk about girls and stuff, but the one thing they both LOVE is cinema. They love to go to the movies, talk about movies, brainstorm movie ideas, and act out their favorite scenes.

Four years ago, Sam and Mattie had an idea to make the most epic teen zombie movie of all time. This was nothing out of the ordinary - they are constantly hatching zany schemes to "launch their careers." But something about this zombie movie stuck with them. They began jotting down notes and writing scenes. They drafted storyboards and dreamt up celebrity cameos along with a dream soundtrack. Eventually, Sam’s older brother Jesse decided it was time to help them make it happen FOR REAL. Jesse called up his childhood friend, Bobby Carnevale, to come film with the boys for a few days. The two quickly realized this was going to be way more than just some backyard zombie film and the seed for a feature documentary was planted.

In October of 2015, Jesse, along with a group of Sam and Mattie’s close friends, launched a two=part Kickstarter campaign with a funding goal of $50,000. The first part: to film the actual zombie movie, exactly as Sam and Mattie envisioned it.

The second part: to film a raw, behind-the-scenes documentary of Sam and Mattie at work as they turn their script into the most epic teen zombie movie of all time.

The media quickly took to Sam and Mattie, and the project was featured on several news sites and blogs, such as PBS, Buzzfeed, and Huffington Post. On November 19, 2014, the campaign closed at $68,936 - a 38% increase from the original funding goal. The rest, well...the rest is history.